Heat
by dakeyras
Summary: Naruto and Sakura are stuck somewhere in the Land of Wind as part of a mission. While waiting to get home, they get to know each other a little better. Set after the end of Shippuden but not completely canon-compliant.


Naruto stretched out on the sofa, kicking his shoes into the corner and putting his feet up. His jacket was in a pile on the floor.

"Oi, stop hogging all the space," Sakura said. He groaned and shuffled into a sitting position, and she fell onto the spot next to him.

"I'm bored," he whined. "Why do we have to wait _two whole days_ for the return message? I'm never doing a courier mission again, and especially not to the Land of Wind."

Sakura ignored him.

"There's nothing at all to do. I've already caught up on my sleep, and we still have to wait, that's how boring this is."

Sakura fished a bottle out of her travelling bag and took a swig. It burned on the way down.

"I mean, why do- Is that rice wine?" Naruto suddenly perked up. She wordlessly passed him the bottle, letting her head fall back onto the sofa.

As he grabbed two cups from the small kitchen in their hotel room, she sighed. "I'm at least as bored as you are. There's absolutely nothing to do in this piece-of-shit middle-of-nowhere hamlet. They don't even have anywhere for ninja to train!"

Naruto poured out two generous measures of the rice wine. "Even if they did, it's much too hot. Well, here's to getting back to Konoha soon." They clinked the cups together and then downed them.

Sakura blinked and shook her head. That was stronger than she'd expected. Sweat slowly ran down her forehead and strands of hair clung to her as she cursed the warm weather again. Naruto also looked a bit spaced out as he stared at his empty cup.

"Haven't you been to equally hot and boring places when you were travelling with Jiraiya?" Sakura asked.

Naruto shook his head. "He always made sure there'd be somewhere I could train and somewhere he could be a pervert. Well, except for the few times he tried to get me to come peeking with him."

Sakura giggled, and poured out some more rice wine. "Here's to Jiraiya," she toasted.

"May he look down on us from wherever he is," Naruto agreed. "Although he's probably looking down at a women's hot spring, if anything."

"So did you ever take a peek at something like that? Surely Jiraiya convinced you at least once over the course of three years!"

"Well, there was one time... or maybe two... it's just really exciting, I guess, and I can see why it became a habit for him. The danger of being caught adds a delicious thrill, you know. But you can't tell anyone!" Naruto looked panicked for a moment. "I'm a respectable, responsible Hokage candidate now, and I'll never find a partner if all the women know I'm a pervert!"

"Well, since you've admitted it, I've actually peeked at the men's baths before," Sakura said shyly. "Me and Ino did once, but we couldn't get Hinata to come along with us, so it was a bit weird. We didn't stay that long, and I didn't really feel anything from it."

Naruto grinned. "It's nice to know I'm not the only member of our team to do something like that. And it's not the same for Hinata – she can just use her Byakugan if she wants a sneaky look at someone's package." Sakura's mouth opened into an 'o' of comprehension.

"I blame Kakashi's influence for the way we turned out. Anyway, this is much too warm for me," she said. A moment later and her dress joined Naruto's jacket. She stretched her arms over her head, enjoying the freedom of just wearing her chest bindings and shorts. "It's gonna keep getting worse until the afternoon, and I don't want all my clothes to end up too sweaty."

Naruto plucked at his T-shirt. "This is already ruined, but my trousers are mostly fine."

"Might as well take them off too, then. It's nothing I haven't seen before in training, after all."

Naruto shrugged and stripped his trousers off. The room was slightly more bearable with his legs exposed to the air, but his shirt still clung to him. He wiped the sweat out of his eyes.

"I still miss Jiraiya, you know. He taught me so much. And, believe it or not, his writing was surprisingly good."

"I'll take your word for it – regardless of what I've done, I'm not reading any of his smut," Sakura said, laughing. She poked Naruto in the side. "By the way, I heard a great story about him from Tsunade. The Sannin were all on this mission, and Tsunade was supposed to be making contact with an undercover spy in Earth. Or was it Lightning? Anyway, she went out to meet up with the spy, but there wasn't anybody at the meeting place. When Tsunade got back to her team-mates, she described who she'd been looking for and Jiraiya suddenly looked really sheepish. It turned out he'd met the spy, but neither of them had recognised the other – the spy was looking for Tsunade, and Jiraiya was looking for other amusements. Anyway, they ended up sleeping together and the spy missed her rendezvous. They sorted it out in the end, but Tsunade used to tease him about it all the time."

Naruto grinned, remembering the way Jiraiya had told that story. He'd been a lot more concerned with what the spy looked like than the longer-term repercussions for the mission, and Naruto could probably pick her out of a crowd based on how well she'd been described. Jiraiya had an eye for detail that never ceased to amaze him, even if it was usually wasted on remembering the 'attributes' of whichever women he'd most recently been with.

"I used to think he was a weird old dude who slept with prostitutes all the time, but he was actually really smooth and very successful with women, you know?" Naruto said.

Sakura snorted. "Even when he was that old? I don't believe it."

"He tried to teach me his 'secret sage techniques' once, but I wasn't very good at it. He made it work for himself somehow, but whatever the magic ingredient was, I never picked it up. Not that I tried that hard – he was a very unique person, and I wouldn't want to be _that_ similar to him."

Sakura turned to face him. "Can you show me some of those techniques? Tsunade never shut up about how annoying Jiraiya was when he asked her out all the time, but I never actually got to watch him make a fool out of himself."

Naruto blushed a bit. "Are you sure? I don't even remember all that much, and it's been a while anyway, and I wasn't very good at it at the time..."

"Stop backpedalling like that. I'm bored and it sounds funny, so why not?" Sakura poked him again. "Unless you can't do it, because you're too scared."

Naruto wasn't about to let that stand. "Well, you're really asking for it now!"

He tried to dredge up Jiraiya's advice. "So first, he had these ideas about how to start conversations with women he liked, but obviously we're already talking." To buy time, he emptied and refilled his cup. The bottle was half empty already; he hadn't noticed how fast they were drinking.

"Alright... I've got this..." Naruto said. He was sprawled confidently across most of the couch, now, and leaning towards Sakura. His voice was a bit lower than usual as he asked "So, how do you want to do this?"

"Do what?"

He wrapped an arm around her shoulders and pulled her closer, whispering in her ear. "Well, I'm not sure if you want me to be a gentleman or a rogue."

She shivered at the feeling of his breath on her ear. "Okay, that's actually not bad, although I don't believe you could pull off being a gentleman. You don't have the table manners, for a start."

"Don't worry," Naruto purred, deepening his voice further. He was starting to enjoy himself. " _Whatever_ you want, that's what I'll give you. Anything... at... all."

He poured out another cup of rice wine for Sakura, only using his free arm – the other stayed wrapped around her. "Bottoms up." And with that, he downed his own drink, feeling a fire building in his throat and stomach. And elsewhere.

Sakura sipped at hers, not really minding Naruto's arm. He reached over her to set his cup down, flexing his other arm in her face. "Oops," he said, grinning.

"Naruto, I'm a ninja too. You're not going to impress me by showing off your arms."

"So you'd rather see something else?" he countered. "My T-shirt's a bit sticky anyway."

He gently took it off without dislodging Sakura, so that she was nestled against his bare chest. The T-shirt went somewhere down the side of the couch; he wasn't paying attention to that. "Hey, your hair's a bit sticky too. That can't be comfortable." He leant over and softly brushed it away from the side of her head, cupping her face in his right hand. She stared up at him, eyes so wide and green...

"You know, I'm surprised," she said. "You're actually not bad at this. Although it's still not really working on me."

Sakura's voice was quite hesitant on that last part, Naruto thought. He slowly, gently leaned forward, giving her enough time to stop him if she wanted to. And he kissed her.

His arms went fully around her, cradling her body to his – so hot it almost scorched him where she touched his bare skin – and he probed her mouth with his tongue. He could still taste the rice wine on her breath. A hint of her perfume hung in the air around her.

After a few seconds that felt too short he pulled back. Sakura looked up at him, a dazed smile on her face, and he wanted to swoop right back in. He smirked instead. "How was that?"

Sakura was incredibly conscious of Naruto's hands on her bare lower back. "Ummm," she said, trying to sit up. She fumbled for a handhold and brushed against – something.

"Oh, do you want to..." Naruto trailed off, surprised. She blushed hard.

"Is that your-" she asked before Naruto interrupted her by kissing her again. This time it wasn't brief at all, and she thoroughly approved of that. When they both came up for air, his hands were in her hair and she had a solid grip on his firm thigh with one hand while the other stroked his chest.

Sakura looked him in the eyes. "Right now, I definitely want a rogue."

* * *

 **A/N:** As this site doesn't allow lemons, I'm not posting the explicit second half here (it's another 1k words or so of lemon). I'm on Archive Of Our Own under the same name, and the full version is posted there. If you can't find it, PM me for a link.

Also, I'm very interested in feedback on this, as it's my first attempt at writing any sort of romance or smut.


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